


And as You Rise Above the Fear Lines in His Brow

by librata



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Ableism, Ableist Language, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Charles Has Issues, Charles Xavier in a Wheelchair, Dark Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr Defense Squad, Erik Lehnsherr is not a Happy Bunny, Erik has Issues, Honestly Charles What Are You Thinking, Imprisonment, M/M, Mutant Politics, Mutant Powers, Mutant Rights, Mutant Suppression, Politics, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Stockholm Syndrome, questionable decision making
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:42:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26182876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/librata/pseuds/librata
Summary: It’s 2020, and mutantkind has been declared by governments around the world a subspecies of humanity. Sweeping legislation has left mutants with the same amount of rights as animals, and governments, corporations, and private citizens are allowed to use and own mutants as they please.Erik Lehnsherr is a 32-year-old mutant who lives in a testing facility, and he’s just been handpicked by some new asshole scientist for closer study, a sickeningly-proper British dude in a wheelchair named Charles Xavier. As they interact more frequently, Erik is beginning to suspect that this asshole scientist might be more than he professes to be.In the end, it may be up to the angry metallokinetic and the sketchy scientist to set things right with the world, but it won’t be easy. And it sure as hell won’t be fun.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Comments: 14
Kudos: 39





	And as You Rise Above the Fear Lines in His Brow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flightinflame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightinflame/gifts), [midrashic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/midrashic/gifts), [lavenderlotion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavenderlotion/gifts).



One year, two months, and twelve days ago, a mutant-rights interest group had lobbied hard enough for legislation affording captive mutants “provisions that allow for a standard of living fit to prevent the purposeful suffering and/or unjustifiably cruel treatment while in the custody of the State or private institution.”

So, Erik got a clock.

The audit exercised over his captors hadn’t spurred much change among the institution’s daily goings-on. Captives received three healthy, wholesome meals each day. A team of trained medical staff remained within reach should any of them fall ill or injured. Hell, Erik heard rumors that some of his fellow inmates were even allowed to read books and newspapers in their cells. 

Overall, the facility was given a rating of “Excellent” by the newly-formed Mutant Captivity Organization Audit Commission, with the stipulation that they provide all “captives of reasonable intelligence the opportunity to maintain a healthy and natural daily schedule, barring special circumstances necessitating otherwise.”

They couldn’t give Erik an actual clock, of course. Even the cheapest, most shoddily-crafted time pieces contained bits of alloy which were Strictly Forbidden Under Every Circumstance. Instead, a harsh, mechanical buzz sounded through the plastic-grated speaker in the ceiling over his bed every thirty minutes, even throughout the night. 

And each morning, Erik was greeted into the day by the same robotic voice, relaying the day’s key metrics like a bored statistician. 

_”Good morning,”_ said the pre-recorded voice as Erik’s eyes shot open once more. _”Today is Thursday, January 30th, 2020. It is seven o’clock AM, Eastern Standard Time. In Orange County, New York, the temperature high will be 31 degrees Fahrenheit and the low will be 5 degrees Fahrenheit. Snow flurries are to be expected throughout the day.”_

Erik stared at the pristine white of the ceiling above him as the lights in his cell began to crescendo until they stung his eyes in their full brightness. January 30th, 2020 would be Erik’s 1,851st day in captivity, and also, the start of his 33rd year alive. 

_Zum Geburtstag viel Glück,_ his brain thought. _Zum Geburtstag viel Glück. Zum Geburtstag, lieber Erik, zum Geburtstag viel Glück._

“And many mooooreee,” Erik hummed under his breath.

“What was that, Lehnsherr?” demanded a different voice from the speaker above his head, the all-hearing, all-listening sonic master. 

“Today’s my 32nd birthday,” Erik replied calmly, still as a statue where he remained in his narrow cot. “I was wondering if you had a gift for me.”

“Every day you wake up and aren’t dead is a gift. You ought to remember that a little better.”

“Hmm. Did you happen to keep the receipt?”

Erik’s comment was followed by a loud screech of the time-keeping buzzer, a sound which the guards knew he loathed and used to punish any mouthiness, but Erik merely closed his eyes and let a dry, humorless smile crawl across his lips. 

_Happy birthday, to me._

\---------------

“Lehnsherr.”

Erik’s eyes remained closed where he sat cross-legged on the floor of his cell.

_”Lehnsherr.”_

The Voice from his speaker took on a harsh slant, but what did its anger mean to Erik? What did it matter if it was _displeased?_

“Want a cattle prod to your arse again?” It asked after he remained immobile. “Get up.”

With deliberate slowness, Erik’s eyes fluttered open to find themselves locked in the mullied reflection of the two-way mirror. When he tilted his head to just the right angle, he could sometimes make out the team of onlookers tasked with the unfortunate obligation to observe him, make sure he didn’t start conspiring to build some sort of desperate weapon from his mattress fabric or hard plastic cot. They’d learned long ago not to leave him unattended for any period of time. 

“Cattle prods aren’t so bad,” Erik replied evenly to himself in the mirror. “You all ought to remember, shouldn’t you? Everyone got a piece of it.”

_The tiniest, most microscopic threads of copper alloy bind around a series of wire, undetected by whoever is in charge of the Anti-Metal Committee™. Mere moments after the electrified barb crosses the threshold of his ever-weakening collar’s limitations, Erik wraps his entire being around those millimeters of metal, clutching them in his grasp like he’s never felt anything more perfect in his life. Chaos–-no one in the immediate vicinity is equipped for this, no one knows what to do in the face of the unbridled metallokinetic as he rips the cattle prod from its owner’s hands, casts it in a menacing arc around the room. One by one, the pigs cry out and crumple to the floor, pretzeled in pathetic heaps as the electricity courses through their conductive blood._

_The glory is fleeting, but it is wonderful all the same, and in the moments before the plastic darts pumped full of paralytic pierce his skin, he knows that **he** wins for now, that **he** is the one with the power._

“Fixed ‘em,” The Voice said with the same inexpressive timbre. “Don’t gotta worry about that anymore.”

Erik’s eyes remained opened, his silence an assent to the captors’ whim.

“You’re the lucky winner, Lehnsherr,” continued The Voice. “It’s Moving Day.”

Erik allowed a blink, but nothing else. Moving day?

“You’re getting brand new digs, courtesy of the State of New York. Thankful?”

Erik knew how to spot danger when it reared its head. He’d been raised on a steady diet of instability, he knew when threats were posed. “I rather like my room. I’ve really made it my own,” he replied into the expanse of white nothing around him.

“Your new one is cozier,” The Voice said with its mocking edge. “I’m not fucking with you when I say you’re lucky, Lehnsherr.”

Before Erik could open his mouth to tell The Voice and Its companions to fuck right off, a sudden, sharp pain punctured to the right of his jugular, and his conscious mind began to fade. 

“Rrrroooootttt…..in hell,…..Pig,” slurred Erik as the tranquilizer overtook his muscles, and the world slipped away.

\---------------

Soft. Warm. 

Erik’s eyes shot open, and through the blur of sleep, he registered a powerful call to his metalsense from somewhere extremely near. 

He gasped, choking as if he’d been drowning and only just breached the water’s surface, and his hands flew up to grapple onto those mobile alloys, to immerse himself in their movement, in their charge, to fling them at a thousand miles per hour in all directions in vain attempt to kill, maim, or damage, and then--

Nothing.

His outstretched hands and fingers flexed in the air, bereft even as the currents of titanium, iron, aluminum, and steel coursed through his very marrow. Scrambling, Erik jolted upright in a spacious bed and locked his eyes on a team of objects set across a table against the opposite wall.

A pipe. A skeleton key. An empty can. Ball bearings. 

They beckoned to him deliciously, a quartet of sirens prying at his self control. Entrapped, Erik lifted his hands again to take hold, but was again met with absence. Feel them as he could, they did not respond to his bid.

Amid the shock, his mind settled back into his body and assessed its surroundings. 

There was light. Real, legitimate sunlight streaming through a large window beside the bed. To the right of the window sat a (plastic) toilet and (plastic) sink, with a fluffy towel draped over the basin’s edge. 

The walls were covered in paint just blue enough to be noticeably not-white, and the comforter cocooned around his body was a deeper navy, buttery soft to the touch. His mattress, too, was wide enough to accommodate his entire wingspan, and impossibly downy.

If not for the ever-present yoke of the collar around his neck, Erik may have thought that he was in a real bedroom. 

A mechanical hum had Erik snapping his head toward the wall at his right, and he watched as the off-white curtains parted at the center and pulled to each side, revealing a thick plexiglass floor-to-ceiling window that spanned the entire length of the wall. On the other side of the window was a narrow room, and in that room was a man.

Situated in a wheelchair, the man looked young and trim, dwarfed in a tweed blazer and baggy sweater. From where he sat on the bed, Erik could see that the man had bright blue eyes and a smile that made his stomach turn.

“Good afternoon, Erik.”

Erik saw the man’s lips move, but the sound came through a speaker embedded deep into the ceiling overhead. Plastic-grated, still.

He stared at the man, unblinking. Unmoving.

“I’m sure you’re very confused, and for that, I apologize,” continued the man, as if Erik had done anything other than stare with dead eyes. “However, I do hope that you find your new accommodations more comfortable than your last, and, if there’s anything you would like, please, let me know and I will see to it that you get it.”

Erik did not allow his cynicism to contort his expression, not even for a centimeter. His face remained stony and dry, even as his head began to whir with alert. With doubt.

“A 70-inch television with surround sound, in that case,” Erik replied, and swung himself around so that he faced the man head-on rather than from the side. “Oh, and a hamburger with fries and a chocolate milkshake.”

The man laughed then, and the timbre echoed down the length of Erik’s spine. Not because it was hollow or cold, but because it wasn’t. It sounded warm and genuine, and the brightness in his eyes corroborated Erik’s suspicions. 

“They did tell me that you’re very clever,” the man mused, and pushed at his chair’s wheels to propel himself closer to the window. With a pang, Erik realized he couldn’t feel the metal of the chair, which meant that there was some sort of blocker between himself and the man. “I’ll certainly see what I can do, my friend.”

 _My friend._ The words, tacked on in careless afterthought, reverberated through Erik’s body like a shock from a bolt of lightning. The steely composure that Erik worked so hard to maintain faltered for the slightest moment as a memory, clear as crystal, played out across his mind’s eye.

_”My friend,” says Bolivar, the light twinkling off of his light blue eyes. “You ought to know that I understand better than anyone.” A wave of his hand, a brief gesture toward his legs. Feet that don’t touch the ground from where the dangle from a chair. “The world doesn’t tolerate different. The world is scared of different.”_

Erik locked his gaze on the entirely new set of blue eyes, before they flitted to the wheelchair. To the foot clad in an expensive-looking oxford, turned a tad too awkwardly on the footplate. 

“I am not your friend.” His words were cold, but rang with a power that Erik hoped the man could feel. With practiced precision, Erik schooled his face back into the stony, expressionless mask that he’d donned with exclusivity throughout the years. His eyes met the man’s once more, and then narrowed, just a touch.

The man stared back, gaze imperceptible. And then those rose-colored lips parted once more to reveal a row of straight, white teeth. “I suppose you aren’t,” he agreed in a rich baritone, an octave too low for a man of his rather slight stature. “And, perhaps, you never will be.”

Erik locked his jaw.

“My name is Dr. Charles Xavier,” he continued, casual as he rolled his chair to a control panel near the window. “And whether or not you and I become friends, we most certainly _will_ be growing accustomed to each other’s presence, Erik.”

A long finger extended outward to flick at a switch on the panel, and in the next moment, the beige curtains began to crawl their way toward each other. As they obscured the window and the figure behind it, Erik caught an unmistakable wink of a blue eye, and then was once again shrouded in nothing but isolation.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments appreciated! (And needed for lifeblood, tbh).
> 
> Love X-Men? Need a place to rant about Disney's fuckery? Looking for fellow comic stans? Come hang out on Discord! [We're an 18+ General X-Men server and we're all lovely.](https://discord.gg/kHUSgr)


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